Исследователи из Израиля и США создали "мини-человека-на-чипе" для ускорения испытаний лекарств.
Ученые создали девять различных человеческих мини-органов-на-чипе, на которых можно будет испытывать лекарства. Они смогли даже больше: объединить девять органов - включая мозг, сердце и печень - в мини-человека-на-чипе.
Две новых статьи от исследователей из Тель Авива и Гарварда были опубликованы в Nature Biomedical Engineering.
Органы-на-чипе были впервые разработаны в 2010 году в Гарварде. Ученые взяли клетки из разных органов - сердца, мозга, почек и легких - и используя биоинженерию поместили их в пластиковые контейнеры, так называемые "чипы".
В новых исследованиях ученые соединили различные мини-органы вместе и показали, что они реагируют на препараты так же, как органы живых людей реагировали бы на них в ходе клинических испытаний.
Разрабатывая лекарства, исследователи сначала испытывают их на мышах и только потом, в случае успеха, уже на людях. Но в 60-90 процентах случаев препараты, которые оказались эффективными с мышами, с людьми не работают. Это делает процесс разработки лекарств очень длительным и дорогостоящим. Было бы очень хорошо, если бы можно было пропустить стадию с мышами. И это было невозможно до сего момента.
Команда из 57 ученых в течение 7 лет разрабатывала то, что они называют "a functioning comprehensive multi Organ-on-a-Chip (Organ Chip) platform". Они заставили клетки почек в пластиковом контейнере работать как фильтр (как почки работают в человеческом теле), а клетки сердца - сокращаться. И все то же самое для других органов и тканей: печени, мозга, ГЭБ, легких, костого мозга, кожи и кишечника.
Кроме того, они создали так называемого "дознавателя", роботизированное устройство для переноса жидкости, связывающее между собой различные органы-на-чипе, заменяющее кровоток.
Затем ученые протестировали на органах-на-чипе два препарата: от воспаления кишечника и от рака. Исследование показало, что система из органов-на-чипе реагировала на препараты точно так же, как человеческие органы во время клинический испытаний.
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Israel, US Researchers Create ‘Mini Human on a Chip’ To Speed Up Drug Testing,Entertainment,Human-on-a-Chip,Organs-on-a-chip,heart-on-a-chip,speed up drug testing,drug testing on animals,microchips,comprehensive multi Organ-on-a-Chip,artificial blood,science,biology,human biology,future technologies,#Chip #US #Drug In what sounds like something straight out of science fiction, Israeli and US researchers say they have created nine different mini human Organs-on-a-Chip that will pave the way for researchers to test out drugs as if on humans. Two new studies by researchers in Tel Aviv University and Harvard University on the subject were published in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering. Organs-on-a-chip were first developed in 2010 at Harvard University. Then, scientists took cells from a specific human organ — heart, brain, kidney and lung — and used tissue engineering techniques to put them in a plastic cartridge, or the so called chip. Despite the use of the term chip, which often refers to microchips, no computer parts are involved here. What is new in the two studies is the fact that the researchers have now managed to link-up the various organs, and have proven that these can react to drugs in the same way as human organs would in a clinical trial. When developing drugs, researchers try them out first on rodents and only then, if successful, on humans. But some 60%-90% of the drugs that are successful in rodents fail in humans. This makes the process of drug development very long and expensive. Ideally one would want to cut out the rodent stage and get to human testing directly, for quicker results. That of course is impossible. Until the two new studies. Indeed, a team of 57 scientists at Tel Aviv University and Harvard and other research entities and drug developers, worked for seven years on a project to develop what they call “a functioning comprehensive multi Organ-on-a-Chip platform” that reacts to drugs just as real humans would react to them in a clinical setting. The scientists did this by taking human cells and through tissue engineering managed to mimic the functionality of the organ from which the cells were taken — like the liver or the heart — within a plastic cartridge the size of a USB flash drive. Not only that. The scientists created a so-called Interrogator, a robotic liquid transfer device to link individual “Organ Chips” with each other, in a way that mimics the flow of blood between organs in the human body. They created a unique machine that connects between the nine organs, the brain, the lung, the bone marrow, and others, like a ‘Lego,’ to create a mini ‘Human-on-a Chip’. The researchers then tested their Organs-on-a-Chip with two drugs: a drug to combat intestine inflammation and a cancer drug. Their study showed that when the drugs were injected into the new system, the Organs-on-a-Chip reacted and responded to the medications just as real human organs did in clinical trials with the drugs. To get to this point was not easy and there were “many challenges on the way” that had to be overcome. For example, real human organs live off oxygen supplied to them by human blood. So the researchers had to develop a way to feed their cells in a chip and devised an artificial blood — made-up of different chemicals, minerals, vitamins and hormones and other components, that fed the cells in the chip. Also, whereas in a human organ there are billions of cells, the Organ-on-a-Chip just has thousands of cells — so the researchers had to develop computational models to overcome the size problem and ensure that the cells function like those in a real organ, even while on the chip. Hopefully one day people will be able to use this to test drugs instead of animal models.
» * Organ-on-a-Chip
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а! вот. нашел!